


After Everything

by SquirrelNova



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Post-Canon, Sleepovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:15:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25792720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquirrelNova/pseuds/SquirrelNova
Summary: Yuma invites Kaito, Shark, and Astral over for a sleepover
Relationships: Tenjou Kaito & Tsukumo Yuuma
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	After Everything

Kaito finds himself in front of Yuma's front door. It's late - the sun is just about to go down - and he's been invited to stay the night. His heart is pounding in his chest.

Its kind of funny how he's faced much, much more terrifying things, but somehow the mundane act of visiting a friend is what gives him pause. Maybe he should have bought Haruto along - he always got along better with Yuma.

The decision is taken out of his hands when a very excited Tsukumo Yuma throws open the door.

"Kaito! You came!" Without waiting for a response, he grabs his arm and tugs him inside. "Come on - we're about to eat!"

The whirlwind that is Yuma sits him down next to Ryouga, who's looking equally as awkward, and then says a quick thanks before practically inhaling the food in front of them. Astral lingers in the background, because Yuma had insisted they _all_ come and not even living on a different world can stop his aggressive friendship.

"Yuma!" His sister chides. He responds with a grunt, mouth too full to respond, and she just sighs.

"Why don't you introduce us to your friends, Yuma?" Asks his grandma, and his face breaks into a wide grin.

"This is Kaito!" He gestures to Kaito, who tenses. Is he supposed to say something? "He's really cool and he has a bunch of cool tech and he's a really good duelist!"

"Hi," Kaito says.

"And this is Shark!" Ryouga crosses his arms and looks away "He's my classmate _and_ the leader of the Seven Barian Emperors!"

Silence sweeps across the table as Yuma realises his mistake and desperately tries to backtrack.

"The Seven Barian Emperors?" Yuma's sister says calmly "You mean the ones who invaded Earth and tried to merge it with the Barian world? _Those_ Barian Emperors?"

Yuma leaps to Ryouga's defense and then an argument breaks out and Ryouga looks like he wants to sink into his chair and disappear. Kaito can't blame him.

"So Kaito," Somehow Yuma's grandmother seems entirely unaffected by this - like it's a normal occurrence in this household. She looks at him with a cheery smile "How did you meet Yuma?"

"We dueled each other." He doesn't like to think about that time. He still regrets it.

And yet here he is, a year after he tried to kill him, being welcomed as a friend. It's surreal.

"That's nice. Yuma's making so many new friends through dueling."

He nods awkwardly, then reaches for some of the food. Yuma and his sister are still bickering.

"You didn't care when Shingetsu came over last week and _he's_ actually killed people!"

"He's _what?"_

Ryouga wrinkles his nose at that, but somehow Yuma manages to win the argument by explaining all the stupider things he's done that haven't killed him yet, so his sister just sighs and mumbles something under her breath before returning to her food.

Kaito can understand: he'd be as terrified if Haruto pulled the same stunt, but he's fought alongside Ryouga and he trusts him almost as much as he does Yuma so he knows her brother is in safe company (even if said company is prone to making bad decisions sometimes).

Yuma's moved onto talking about a new card he's not sure if he should put in his deck or not, and Astral is adding his own comments every now and then. After a few moments Ryouga interjects with his own opinion and soon the argument from before is almost completely forgotten about.

-

Yuma places a haphazard stack of movies on the coffee table and it immediately topples over. After a mad scramble, they end up spread out in front of them and Kaito leans over to look.

"These are all my favourites," Yuma says, and then he picks one up and shoves it in Ryouga's face "I think you'll like this one, Shark."

"Sharknado 32: It's Out of this World?" Ryouga frowns "It looks dumb."

"The sharks travel through _space!"_

"I can already do that though."

"Oh come on," Yuma whines, dramatically flopping over "You also want to watch Sharknado, right Astral?"

"I want to watch Different Dimension ESPer Robin."

"But we've already watched that!"

"I want to watch it again."

"What about this one?" Kaito asks, picking one at random. It's some kind of documentary with 'BATTLE CITY: THE MAKING OF A KING' across the front in bold letters.

"I love that one!" Yuma practically leaps over to him, taking the movie and holding it up so they can all see it.

"You love all of them," Ryouga scoffs, but his words hold no real bite to them.

"This is a documentary," Yuma continues "Which would usually be really boring, but this one's about _dueling!_ "

"Mutou Yugi, right?" Kaito asks "The King of Games?"

"Exactly! This is about one of his first tournament wins."

"Who's Mutou Yugi?" Astral asks, and Yuma looks like he'd just killed a puppy in front of him.

"That's it, we're definitely watching this one!"

-

"So..." Yuma grins, looking up at Astral who's staring at the screen with a fierce intensity. They're nearly at the end and Yugi is about to face off against Marik "Who do you think is gonna win?"

"Judging by the content of the movie, your comments before we watched it, and the narration five minutes ago: Yugi wins."

Kaito squints at the screen. "Did he just... get taller?"

"Huh?" Yuma's eyes flick between him and the screen "Wait, rewind it."

They end up rewatching the clip about five times, but between them they can't figure out whether or not there's any change so eventually they just give up and keep watching.

"Do you think they're actually playing a shadow game?" Ryouga asks a few turns into the duel.

"Of course they are!"

Kaito hums. "It could be faked; some tournaments do that to make them more engaging."

The dialogue between the duelists isn't included, but the narrator is explaining the popular shadow game fan theory as they fight. Honestly, Kaito would never have believed it if he hadn't had much, much weirder things happen to him.

"No way! It's totally real!"

"They don't even have numbers," says Ryouga.

"A shadow game is one where your life is in danger, right? Doesn't that mean they're automatically playing one because they're on top of a blimp?" Kaito wonders out loud.

Yuma gasps. "Does that mean you played a shadow game on the moon?"

"I think it's defined by the loser specifically losing something or dying," Astral says "So it would be a shadow game if they threw the loser off the blimp."

"So you played an anti shadow game: you won and then you died."

"Which means this is definitely a shadow game because they both have spirits next to them that are being destroyed when they lose life points," Astral continues and Yuma makes a noise that sounds like a deflating balloon.

-

Yuma spends the next hour scouring through old footage of the King of Games, interrogating Astral about the spirit partner he can apparently see. Kaito tunes out ten minutes in. Ryouga doesn't appear to have been paying attention in the first place.

His deck sits heavy in his pocket, newly reworked now that he doesn't have any numbers. Absentmindedly he takes it out and looks through it, noting that he needs a few more traps just in case. His strategy has changed as well, and he hasn't had the chance to test it yet.

Ryouga catches his eye, then pulls out his own deck and gestures towards it questioningly. He agrees with a sharp nod. They duel the old-fashioned way, sat on the floor with their cards laid out between them. It's peaceful at first, then Yuma notices the duel and fumbles over himself trying to watch. Astral just watches passively, chiming in every now and then to offer insight or explain something to Yuma.

Without any of his numbers or rank-up-magic cards Ryouga's deck is significantly weaker, but he's still got a large array of other xyz monsters and he uses them skilfully. In the end it's Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon's effect that gets him the victory, but it's close.

They play another duel after that, and then Yuma joins in. After a very makeshift tournament (which Kaito wins), they end up playing a 1v1v1 duel. Even though some cards' effects end up debated and Ryouga and Yuma team up halfway through to take down one of his monsters, he finds himself having fun.

Yuma ends up winning, and neither him nor Ryouga can bring themselves to be mad about it.

-

It's 1am and Yuma is practically falling asleep where he stands. Not that he wants to admit it: he's still forcing his usual energy, but his movements are slow and he's fooling no-one.

"One more duel..." He whines, stifling a yawn. Ryouga gives him a flat stare, then grabs him by the collar like a kitten and practically drags him upstairs. Kaito decides that he should probably join them; he's used to pulling all-nighters and his sleep schedule is a mess but Yuma can't stay up much longer and even Ryouga is starting to get sluggish.

The attic is too small to fit all of them in, so there's some futons for them laid out on the floor of the bedroom below it. Yuma is unceremoniously tossed onto the bed, then Ryouga sits on the floor and starts rummaging through the ragged bag he bought with him.

All of them (except Astral, who thankfully gives them some privacy) get ready to go to bed. Kaito forgot to bring pyjamas so opts to just sleep in his clothes, while Yuma gets unreasonably excited over Ryouga's shark print ones.

They all get settled into bed. There's the faint noise from the TV above them where Astral is binge-watching a new show, but otherwise it's almost completely silent. It's nice. He feels safe here.

That's what Yuma does: he makes you feel safe and accepted, and suddenly you've gone from having one friend to a hundred who don't care about the person you used to be.

He lies there for a few moments before Yuma breaks the silence.

"What's dying like?"

"Huh?" Ryouga says.

"It's just that you guys died and came back and I didn't and I want to know what it's like."

"I don't remember." His eyes are fixed on the ceiling, a resigned expression on his face "You're there, then you're not, then you are again."

"Really? Every time?"

"It hurts like hell. I don't recommend it."

Kaito can still remember suffocating, desperately trying to reach for air that isn't there. The panic of knowing he's going to die quickly smothered as he realises there's nothing he can do about it.

"It was different for me," He says "I didn't let go."

"Oh yeah, you came back when we fought Don Thousand."

"I have no idea how I did that."

"I'm just glad everyone was resu... res..."

"Resurrected?"

"Yeah, that."

"Can we go to sleep now?" Ryouga grumbles "I don't want to think about dying."

There's another yawn from Yuma and he murmurs "I guess."

The silence doesn't last long before Yuma chimes in again.

"Hey Shark, does your Barian form wear pants?"

Ryouga rolls over and yells into his pillow.

-

Kaito is woken up by sunlight filtering in through the window. Ryouga is still asleep next to him and judging by the loud snoring so is Yuma, so he gets up as quietly as possible and sneaks downstairs.

No-one's there when he gets into the kitchen, so he gets himself a cup of coffee and - after a brief moment of deliberation - starts cooking breakfast.

Before everything that happened, he would cook for Haruto all the time. He's become good at it (even if his current eating habits say otherwise) and the kitchen is filled with the smell of bacon and eggs when Yuma stumbles downstairs. His eyes immediately light up.

"You're cooking!"

"I am." He places a plate in front of Yuma who immediately starts wolfing it down. Astral and Ryouga emerge a few minutes later and he hands Ryouga his plate before sitting down to eat his own.

"This is so good!" Yuma says between bites "You're amazing, Kaito."

He doesn't reply because he has a mouthful of food and he's not as rude as Yuma, but he makes a kind of grunt in response. It was no trouble. Really, it was the least he could do.

"I have to leave now. Thank you for inviting me," He says when he finishes his food, standing up from the table.

"Huh?" Yuma asks "You can't stay longer?"

"I have to take care of Haruto today."

"Oh! Haruto! You can bring him along next time if you want!"

Kaito hadn't realised there'd be a 'next time', but the more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea.

"You can bring Rio too, Shark! And I can invite Kotori, and Tetsuo, and... okay, maybe not Shingetsu, but we could invite a whole load of people and all have fun together!"

"If you bring all of your friends," Ryouga says "They won't fit in the house."

Yuma ponders for a moment. "You have a mansion, right Shark?"

"You're _not_ holding a party in our mansion."

"Please..." He bats his eyes at him in an overdramatic way "The other barians won't mind."

They all know that if asked, the other barians would be far more enthusiastic than even Yuma (which is probably why Ryouga is so apprehensive). They'd probably host the party regardless of Ryouga's opinion.

"...I'll think about it."

"You're the best!" Yuma launches himself at Ryouga, wrapping him in a tight hug. His friend looks mildly irritated, but there's a slight smile tugging at the edge of his mouth.

Kaito turns around to leave, but he's interrupted by Yuma. "Kaito, join the group hug! You too, Astral!"

He can't hold back an affectionate eyeroll as he turns around, awkwardly wrapping his arms around the two. Astral mimics his movements and his hands phase through them. At least Yuma looks happy.

They stay like that for a few seconds before Kaito pulls away. "I should go now."

"Okay..." Yuma pouts, but he accompanies him to the door regardless.

"Thanks for today," He says, "And yesterday."

"No problem! Thanks for the breakfast. And for showing up."

"...you thought I wouldn't show up?"

"No, but Tetsuo did. We made a bet."

Kaito doesn't know how to respond to that.

"Well," He says "I'm glad I came."

Yuma grins at him, and he gives a soft smile in return before he leaves. He's already looking forward to next time.

**Author's Note:**

> I pumped 90% of this thing out after I finished zexal because it's a damn good show and I needed to get it out of my system, and then the last 10% of this was me having no idea how to end it because I'm not used to actually getting to the end of something. hell yeah.


End file.
